Various mobile or portable user equipment such as mobile telephones or portable computers are known by the skilled person. A mobile user equipment may be capable of communication via a wireless interface with another device such as a base station of a mobile telecommunication network or any other station. Such a mobile user equipment will be referred to in the following as a mobile station. The mobile station can be adapted for voice, text message or data communication via the wireless link.
The mobile user equipment could also be used for exchange of confidential information such as exchange of personal information required for transactions between two or more parties. The possible transactions could include, without restricting to these, transactions such as ordering of goods and/or services, transactions that associate with payment of purchased goods and/or services, provision of a receipt, or transactions associated with banking services and so on.
The mobile user equipment could also be used for exchange and/or storage of other information such as personal identification data, passport data and so on. It shall thus be appreciated that in this specification the term ‘transaction’ is not restricted to commercial transactions between parties but instead the term transaction refers to exchange of any information that may of confidential or personal nature.
To enable electronic transactions between two entities a common transaction mechanism is required. In general term, a typical transaction mechanism can be defined to comprise features such as the communication media between the parties of the transaction, transaction protocols and parameters, content transfer and presentation formats, security mechanisms and other functions that may also associate with an electronic transaction between the parties.
In a typical transaction the user needs to provide the other party, such a merchant of goods and/or services with at least some user information, such as a name and address or other contact information of the user. Other confidential information such as credit card number or a personal identity code (e.g. a social security number or national insurance code) may also be required. Typically this information is inserted i.e. filled in an appropriate form. The form may be a paper document or an electronic document such as a markup language document.
The users may find the insertion of the information inconvenient and at least time consuming. It is also possible that a user may type in incorrect information, e.g. an incorrect credit card number. Furthermore, any means that could improve security of transactions while being easy to use would be welcomed by the users of transaction devices.
Therefore the inventors have found that it could be advantageous if a transaction system could be provided which could free the user from manually inserting confidential, personal or other information in a data form or similar means. It could be even more advantageous if the automatic or semiautomatic data insertion procedure should not prejudice the security of the confidential or personal information of the user.